Well, not a repeal. But a calculated promotion of legal harassment against gun makers and sellers -- in order to unleash upon them the real police power in America: the lawsuit.

"When President Obama submits his budget blueprint this week, reports indicate the proposal may include language designed specifically to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment," says Snyder, named the senior rights activist in Washington by Shotgun News.

"This repeal is an objective long sought by gun-grabbing politicians, the anti-gun Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and other extremist groups," he added.

The Tiahrt Amendment, named for Rep. Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, is included in the annual appropriations for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of the U.S. Justice Department. It prohibits gun-grabbing mayors and other repressive officials from obtaining federal gun trace data intended for use only for law enforcement purposes and using the data instead in harassing and costly third-party civil lawsuits against the firearms industry.

If you didn't vote -- rather out of apathy, antipathy to McCain, or anger at Bush -- well, this is the consequence.

A lot of Republicans sat on the sidelines last election or even crossed party lines. To some extent the election was a referendum on Republican management of the country -- but you can't just vote on the management. You also vote, inescapably, on ideology. And this is the ideology that has been ushered in.

Posted by: Ace at 06:43 AM | Comments (65)
Post contains 256 words, total size 2 kb.

The press is engaged in a game of endlessly writing "BHO + MSM = TLF" on their book-covers in hopes he might notice them.

Of course, they're not alone, unfortunately.

Posted by: Ace at 06:04 AM | Comments (42)
Post contains 48 words, total size 1 kb.

And maybe we can witness a videotaped conception while we're at it.

Posted by: Ace at 05:59 AM | Comments (46)
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

Don't you know that you can count me in?

Of course you do! We Beatles fans stick together, after all. You sorta have to when your favorite band broke up before you were born.

(Editors note: the preceding sentence does not apply to Dave in Texas. I'm pretty sure he was pushing 30 before the British Invasion hit.)

So in honor of George Harrison's birthday (Feb. 25, 1943) I am gonna give my fellow Beatlemaniacs a little present: a link to a guy who has a copy ofa previously unreleased Beatles track.

The track? Revolution #10.

What's the big deal about this track? It spawned 3 Beatles songs: the original Revolution #1 that appeared on the White Album; the God-awful sound collage that is Revolution #9 on the White Album; and the re-worked, faster version of Revolution that became the single.

Wait...it spawned Revolution #1 and Revolution #9? How the hell does that work?

The track is what you would get if you merged the two songs together. The first half of the song (it's approx 10 minutes long) is instantly recognizable as Rev. #1, shooby-doo-wap backing vocals and all. You notice, though that there are some additional sound effects (such as a siren) that aren't in Revolution #1, and that Paul's bass seems more prominent in the mix.

The song then fades into what can only be described as a proto-Revolution #9, although the band continues to play over the tape loops and sound effects that Lennon incorporated.

To me, it actually works in a way that other Beatles experimental songs like "What's the New Mary Jane" or "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" never did. In fact, if I had been mixing the White Album I think I would have included this track in place of the other two Revolutions that did appear.

So, go to the link and give it a listen if you are interested. And if you aren't?

Don't you know it's gonna be alright?

Posted by: Jack M. at 05:54 AM | Comments (60)
Post contains 346 words, total size 2 kb.

Update: TVNewser, through a link at Hot Air, says Matthews, citing a source.

...

Pure professionalism.

Why Goldfarb asserts this is Matthews I have no idea. Pretty clear to me it's Olbermann.

Anyone notice that now that MSNBC is frothilly and unabashedly liberal we don't hear too much about the unprofessionalism of news outlets that tilt to one side? We heard a lot about that when Fox was the only such player (despite the fact that Fox was actually straighter in its news reportage than CNN, etc.). Now that the liberals are having their fun, the media and journalism critics don't seem to think it's a half-bad idea.

I wonder what could account for that.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 05:20 AM | Comments (33)
Post contains 131 words, total size 1 kb.

This guy was on the junket, though, like me, not there for the incident.

He says he's unclear on whether Hitch's writing hand was stamped upon; Hitch told me himself that was he case.

As everyone knows, the other people there were Totten and Foreman. I didn't want to confirm that as I knew they were planning a trip to the Lebanese border, in Hezballah country, of course, and didn't really think they needed their names out there more. As they're long back from that (and back from Beirut, I'd imagine) I guess it's okay to mention.

Posted by: Ace at 05:15 AM | Comments (9)
Post contains 119 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:14 AM | Comments (10)
Post contains 8 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm not a big fan of Cramer's "Mad Money" show. It's "Financial Porn" that I rarely watch; HOWEVER, I happened to be channel surfing last night when I caught a snippet of his show that absolutely floored me with it's insight. It's a long clip (12 minutes), but it's pretty good stuff. Like I said before, I'm not a big fan of his schtick but he's been spot on in evaluating the tempest in the financial system since September.

The Battle of the Crater? July 1864, during the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. If you caught "Cold Mountain" in theatres a few years ago, it featured this particular battle. One of the more innovative ideas from the Civil War that was doomed by piss-poor execution.

My ears always perk up when someone makes an apt analogy between current events and a historical battle, but I've got to nitpick just a little bit. Cramer alleges that General Burnside screwed the pooch by blowing up the Confederate lines with NO plan on how to proceed once the lines were breached. That is definitely NOT the case.

The original plan for this operation was for Union Black troops, under the command of Brig. General Ferrero to skirt the edges of the crater and fan out along the Confederate lines to maximize the size of the breach while the Confederates were still reeling from the initial explosion. At the last minute, General Meade instructed General Burnside to replace these specially trained troops with a White unit, commanded by Brig. General Ledlie. Unfortunately, Ledlie didn't bother to instruct his troops on how to exploit the breach (and reportedly spent the whole battle drunk & sitting behind the lines), so they simply charged into the crater and secured its edges. Once the Confederates recovered from their initial shock & counterattacked, Ledlie's troops were in no position to repulse their attack and were slaughtered. Of course, since this WAS the Civil War, Burnside responded to this event by sending Ferrero's specially trained troops down into the crater to shore up Ledlie's doomed men. All this did was add to the casualties on the Union side. According to the reference material I looked at last night, the total casualties on both sides were 3,793 Union troops and 1,182 Confederate troops (between 200 and 300 of them were killed in the initial blast). What should have been a major reversal of fortune for the Confederacy turned into a stalemate where the Union/Confederate casualty ratio was greater than three to one.

Cramer's analogy says that nationalizing the banks is a bad idea similar to the Union's plan in this battle. The truth is that any plan to nationalize banks is WAY WAY worse than the planning that went into that battle: The battle was the result of a brilliant idea that was poorly executed, while bank nationalization is a poor idea that will be poorly executed.

There, now don't you feel better about the people running our government? Glad I could help.

(Even though I didn't watch the whole show, I thought this would be a better topic for a post than summarizing what I DID watch. "Magnum Force" was on AMC last night, and I'm a big time sucker for the first 3 "Dirty Harry" movies.)

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 03:31 AM | Comments (61)
Post contains 566 words, total size 3 kb.

It's almost as if these doggone businesses are willing to abandon their sacred public trust over money or something.

Here's a Bloomberg wrap-up of the others we've already been following.

Anybody think there are buyers out there? I don't.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:05 PM | Comments (42)
Post contains 55 words, total size 1 kb.

President ObamaÂ’s speech seemed to be fairly well received tonight. In case you missed it, hereÂ’s an audio link. Clearly he touched on a number of salient points and said words and stuff, in a speech-like manner. Among these (according to the transcript of the speech):

1. “The Cabinet gets shirts. Not t-shirts! Don’t make a fucking maniac out of me! That’s just the fucking way it is! No fucking pant suits Madame Secretary! The Senate gets shirts too! And pants! Where’s Joe?

2.”There’s a lot of loose shit going on here! You’re on notice John (presumably to Sen. John F. Kerry, D- Mass –ed.)…we’re only as strong as our weakest link! Where’s Joe?”

3. “I’m the only important one up on this podium, behind the teleprompter! Put me some knowledge! I’m on that kind of integrity kick! Get it fucking right! Where’s Joe?”

4. “When I move, I slice like a fucking presidential hammer! Where’s Joe?”

5. “Where are the carriers Joe?”

Or if integrity kicks and hammer slicing arenÂ’t your cup of tea and macrame is, IllTemperedCur provided us with a link regarding Tactical Macrame last night. Sure, it sounds ghey, and is, but who amongst us havenÂ’t at one time or another thought about knitting a Glock cozy or something similar?

But the link to that also led to another link called Bills of Lading. ItÂ’s a blog from a captain of large merchant vessels. Actually kind of interesting, though no mention of ass pirates from what IÂ’ve read so far.

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to xgenghisx@gmail.com. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:38 PM | Comments (129)
Post contains 297 words, total size 2 kb.